Comparison

# Tensel vs Railway

Choose Railway if you want databases, volumes, cron jobs and workers on the same platform as your app. Railway runs stateful workloads; Tensel deliberately does not.

Choose Tensel if the app itself is stateless HTTP and the deciding constraints are jurisdiction, a bill in euros a French accountant will accept, and a spend limit that cannot be exceeded.

## What both do

- Push to deploy from GitHub, with build logs streamed live.
- Builds without a Dockerfile: Railway created Nixpacks, and Tensel builds non-Node languages with it.
- Usage-based pricing on top of a subscription.
- Automatic HTTPS, custom domains, rollback.
- Applications can sleep when idle.

## The differences

| Dimension | Tensel | Railway |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Operating jurisdiction | French company under EU law; hosted on Scaleway in Paris | US company, subject to US law including the CLOUD Act |
| Where your app runs | One region: Paris. Backups, logs and platform data included | Regions in the US, Europe (Amsterdam) and Asia |
| Billing | Euros, EU VAT handled, Factur-X e-invoices | USD, subscription plus usage |
| Team pricing | Team plan: €49/month, unlimited members, never per seat | Pro: $20 per seat per month, plus usage |
| Spend control | Customer-set hard limit (2× plan by default); at 100% a 24-hour grace applies and its usage is absorbed, not billed | Usage limits with configurable hard cap |
| Managed databases | No managed databases; bring your own via environment variables | Postgres, MySQL, Redis, Mongo as first-class services |
| Workers, cron, volumes | No background workers, cron jobs or volumes; stateless HTTP only | All three: background services, cron schedules, persistent volumes |
| Preview environments | No preview environments | PR environments, on by default on some plans |
| Static sites | Detected automatically, served from a European CDN, never billed | Served from the app container; no separate unmetered static tier |
| Deploy without git | From a folder, in the browser or the CLI | railway up deploys a local directory |
| Invoices | Factur-X e-invoices (EU standard), usage by day and by project | Standard invoices in USD |
| Agents | Eleven agent skills ship in the CLI package; skills hold no credentials; /llms.txt published | MCP server available |

## Where Railway is ahead

- Stateful workloads: managed Postgres, Redis, MySQL and Mongo, persistent volumes, cron jobs and background workers in one project.
- PR environments.
- Multi-region deploys, including outside Europe when you want them.
- A template marketplace with hundreds of one-click stacks.

## Where Tensel is ahead

- Jurisdiction: a French company, Paris, EU law. Railway's European region is still operated by a US corporation.
- Flat team pricing: €49 with unlimited members against $20 per seat.
- Euros, EU VAT and Factur-X e-invoices.
- A spend limit whose overrun grace is absorbed by the platform, not billed.
- Static sites are detected and served free; the meters never touch them.
- Agent skills that ship in the CLI package and never hold a credential.

## The price for a team of five

Tensel Team

€49/month

unlimited members, €49 of usage included

Railway Pro, five members

$100/month

$20 × 5 seats, plus usage

Public prices as checked on 24 August 2026, excluding tax. Dollar amounts depend on the exchange rate and do not include usage.

## Frequently asked questions

**Railway runs my Postgres. What do I do on Tensel?**

Bring a managed database from a European provider and hand its URL to your environment as a secret. Tensel deliberately does not run databases; a stateless platform is simpler to keep reliable. The honest consequence is a second bill, from a second provider.

**I use Nixpacks. Does my build carry over?**

Very likely. Tensel builds Go, Python, Rust, PHP, Java and Ruby projects with Nixpacks from the same marker files. Node frameworks are detected directly, and a Dockerfile wins when present, the same rule Railway uses.

**What about cron jobs and workers?**

Tensel does not run them. If your app is a web process plus a worker plus a schedule, Tensel only hosts the web process today. The gap is listed on /product with the other missing pieces.

Comparison built on 24 August 2026 from Railway's public documentation. Spotted something out of date? Write to contact@tensel.eu and we will correct it. Trademarks belong to their owners; Railway is not a partner of or affiliated with Tensel.

[Create an account](https://app.tensel.eu/signup) [Everything the platform does](https://tensel.eu/product)

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Source: https://tensel.eu/vs/railway
Site overview for agents: https://tensel.eu/llms.txt